Consumer Confusion

It seemed inevitable that Cisco would sue Apple for their use of iPhone. It sounds like they actually tried to work out a solution where the name would still be on Apple’s phone, but in the end they couldn’t agree. Very interesting! Having multiple devices with the same name, but very different functionality is a big problem, even for us tech-weenies. It makes it harder to web search for the product you are interested in. It causes a lot of confusion for our non-techie peers and family members. And if a name change does happen because of it, the confusion gets even worse. All of a sudden, you’d have to search for iPhone(ignoring cisco stuff) and applePhone to get a complete picture.